The global financial crisis and economic recession spurred governments to boost fiscal expenditures to stimulate economic growth and to provide capital injections to support their financial sectors. The surge in fiscal spending, combined with a loss of revenue, has caused government deficit spending to rise sharply when measured as a share of GDP and increased the overall level of public debt. Budget deficits likely will stabilize, but are not expected to fall appreciably for some time. Contents of this report: Overview and Background; Austerity Measures in Europe; Impact on Gov’t. Budgets; Fiscal Consolidation: Country Efforts; Recent EU Austerity Measures; Budget Rules; Budget Rules in Europe: The Stability and Growth Pact. A print on demand report.

In war and in peace, the 20th century was the Roosevelt century. From Theodore Roosevelt’s Square Deal and battles with the plutocrats of the Gilded Age, to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal and wartime leadership, to Eleanor Roosevelt’s pivotal work on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and vital role in the Civil Rights movement, their crusades dramatically reshaped the political and moral landscape of our nation.

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Illuminates the intertwining lives of these leaders who became America’s most powerful advocates for social and economic justice. Explores how Theodore’s example of dynamic leadership would inspire the careers of his distant cousin Franklin and his niece Eleanor. A gripping narrative of three of America’s greatest leaders. Photos.

“In this eloquent book, noted political scientist and biographer Burns demonstrates the masterly use of political psychology to understand both the power of leaders and the dynamic between leaders and followers,” writes Louisiana State University Prof. William D. Pederson in a review for Library Journal.

“Co-written with Dunn, this comparative case study of the Roosevelt political triumvirate applies Burns’s leadership theory to Theodore and Franklin; an extension of his theory is also applied to Eleanor, the unelected member of the trio who was a national and world leader nonetheless.

“Skillfully woven throughout is the influence Abraham Lincoln had on the trio — a thread that gives this work cohesiveness and additional depth. A significant psychological element shared by all three was that they were members of society’s upper crust who came to identify with those given society’s crumbs.”

At one level, China is a one-party state that has been ruled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) since 1949. But rather than being rigidly hierarchical and authoritarian, political power in China now is diffuse, complex, and at times highly competitive. Despite the CCP’s grip on power, present-day China’s political process is infused with other political actors that influence and sometimes determine policy.

Contents of this report: (I) Introduction and Overview: China’s Preeminent Political Institutions; (II) The Chinese Communist Party: The Political Bureau (Politburo); The Politburo Standing Committee (PSC); The Secretariat; Party Discipline; (III) The Chinese Government: The State Council; The Ministries; Government Control; (IV) The National People’s Congress; (V) The People’s Liberation Army;

(VI) Relationships Among Leaders; (VII) Other Important Political Actors: Leading Small Groups; Government-Sponsored Research Institutions; Central Party School; The “Princelings”; (VIII) Provincial, Municipal, and Local Governments; (IX) Trends and Idiosyncrasies of China’s Political System: China’s View of Democracy and Political Reform; Coordination of Central and Local Governments; Factionalism; Modern Media; (X) Implications for Congress.

Appendices: A. Official Members of the CCP’s Political Bureau (Politburo) and its StandingCommittee; B. Official Members of China’s State Council (by title); C. Current Members of Central Military Commission.

Author Lionel Gossman maintains that underlying the argument that historiography cannot be subsumed under a poetics or a rhetoric (in the sense of a system of purely linguistic or literary tropes) is a larger claim, namely that a wide range of activities, from literary criticism, through legal debate, theology, ethics, politics, psychology, and medicine to the natural sciences, all constitute rational practices, even if there is considerable variation in the degree of formalism and rigor and in the type of argument most commonly employed in each of these different of fields of inquiry.

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Hence Gossman emphasizes the practice or process of doing history rather than the product. What appeals to him in the idea of reason as a practice is its open, liberal, and democratic character. Historiography as a rational practice supposes a community of participants rather than the “anomie” of a world in which every man is his own historian or, at best, the relation of hero and follower that appears to be implied by privileging the historical “text.”

“In a 1963 essay on Voltaire’s History of Charles XII,” author Lionel Gossman tells the American Philosophical Society, “I had argued, in reaction to the seemingly entrenched positivism of the historical profession, that in constructing their narratives historians use the same literary figures and tropes as writers of fiction.

“After the publication of Hayden White’s groundbreaking Metahistory by the Johns Hopkins University Press (of whose editorial board I was then a member), I became associated with a group of historians, philosophers, and literary scholars, who were putting forward similar arguments.

“Soon, however, as often happens, what had been a challenging, critical position became a new orthodoxy. My students seemed to believe that there was no difference at all between history and fiction.

“I was convinced there was and I began to argue that modern history at least was a problem-solving rather than a myth-making activity, an ongoing process of criticism and revision, which could never, certainly, result in a representation of past reality but which in fact neither aimed nor claimed to offer that.

“I suggested that we consider historical narrative as closer to the competing evidence-based narratives presented in a court of law than to literary fictions. Towards a Rational Historiography was my attempt to stake out a position that was neither naively positivist nor completely skeptical.”

Edward Berenson writes in his bookThe Trial of Madame Caillaux: “Unlike many recent critics of historians and historical practice, especially those influenced by French literary theory, Gossman grounds his discussion in a solid sense of what historians ‘actually do’, not just when they write their narratives but when they perform their research, integrate and evaluate the work of others, revise and reconceptualize their scholarship in the face of new evidence and critical scrutiny.”

The 2000 elections in Maine and Arizona were the first in the nation’s history where candidates seeking state legislative seats had the option to fully fund their campaigns with public moneys.

In 2003, the programs’ goals were to: (1) increase electoral competition; (2) increase voter choice; (3) curb increases in campaign costs; (4) reduce interest group influence; and (5) increase voter participation. The number of candidates who participated in the programs increased from 2000 to 2002. This report: (1) provides data on candidate participation; and (2) describes changes in five goals of Maine’s and Arizona’s programs in the 2000 through 2008 elections and the extent to which changes could be attributed to the programs. Illustrations.